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Thursday, September 13, 2012

What would be the best way to bring Hong Kong
into “one country, one system” mode to enable a seamless transition by 2047?
Might the answer lie in gradually dissolving the ideological as well as the
physical boundary that demarcates Hong Kong’s existing
lifestyle? Hong Kongers have just won the first round on the ideological front
by having successfully forced the Leung administration to drastically pull back
the controversial national education policy. But they’d be wrong to let up
their solidarity now.

According to InmediaHK, the no less menacing threat to the
physical boundary, in the form of “Guangdong Hong Kong Cooperation Outline
Agreement”, had already been surreptitiously incorporated as part and parcel of
some national education teaching handbook, which was issued in May 2012 by the National
Education Services
Center and is probably widely in
use by now.

“The Guangdong Hong Kong Cooperation Outline Agreement forms
a part of mainland China’s
overall ‘Twelfth – Fifth Plan’ and was drawn up without the knowledge or
participation of Hong Kong residents. It has four
salient objectives:-

1.Planning
for massive infrastructure facilities (e.g. building cross border roads and
bridges; building nuclear plants in Guangdong
to supply electricity to Hong Kong.)

2.Planning
for a better quality life circle (merging of the education system of both
places; promoting individual travel by car; moving Hong Kong
residents into the mainland etc.)

3.Promoting
cooperative tourism (expanding the individual visit scheme; developing the New
Territories North as a mainland tourist destination.)

4.Planning
for the Pearl River Delta Bay Area Development (absorbing Hong Kong
into the PRD plan; developing the New Territories North-East, Hung Shui Kiu and
Lantau into a suburban economic zone; moving Hong Kong’s
services industry into the zone.)

While emphasizing the economic benefits that the Agreement
might bring about, the teaching handbook makes no mention whatsoever of the
dire consequences it might cause, namely, that it would upset Hong Kong
people’s existing way of life, unnecessarily develop the countryside, alter
Hong Kong’s existing modus operandi of town planning, squander away Hong Kong
people’s tax dollars and, in sum total, trample on the ‘one country, two
systems’ promise. Neither does it mention that a social activist group was
formed to oppose the Pearl River Delta Bay Area Development Plan earlier this
year.

As a tactic to fool students into embracing the ‘Twelfth –
Fifth Plan’, a working paper is incorporated in the handbook which seeks to
draw their attention to job prospects in the new economic zone and to instill
into them the idea of having a chance to contribute to the motherland’s future
economic success.

The fact that Hong Kong has been
‘involuntarily planned’ and made to lose its autonomy on planning matters has
been twisted around to something to the effect that mainland China
is supporting Hong Kong’s development. Who is supporting
whom really?”

The recently promulgated New Territories North-East outline
development plan, which is believed to be a precursor to the broader
Shenzhen-Hong Kong merger plan, has met with overwhelming public disapproval
and despite that, the public consultation period has only been extended for a
month to the end of September.

It does seem that there is a real risk of Hong
Kong losing the physical (or geographical) boundary, which would mean
no less than an imposed mainlandization of the city and the inevitable loss of
the Hong Kong identity. Hong Kongers have to decide
whether they want this to happen or not and to make their opinions heard. This
may be an even tougher battle to fight than national education.

Monday, September 3, 2012

This is a
follow-up to the last post regarding the poignant love story of Song poet Lu
You (陸游). I’ve given my attempted English rendition to Lu’s poem 釵頭鳳:紅酥手, which he wrote on a wall inside
the Shen Garden during his chance encounter with his ex-wife Tang Yuan (唐婉), as well as to Tang’s reply poem 釵頭鳳:世情惡 .

At the
Shen Garden (沈園) accidental encounter, Tang Yuan,
with her husband’s permission, had some food and wine sent over to her
ex-husband Lu You as a courtesy (presumably they were at different spots inside
the big mansion). Her gesture got Lu all sentimental, and the lovelorn poet
improvised his poem on a wall, which Tang later set her sight on, and she wrote
her own reply there.

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About Me

Always fascinated with iconic but unsung females in Chinese history and legends, I cherish a dream of bringing them to the page. Chinese history and poetry, Jin Yong novels, English, French and Russian classics have colored my life and imagination.